Qatar Airways announces further network expansion plans

Qatar Airways has confirmed that it will launch a further eight new passenger destinations in 2017-18, in addition to the seven that it had already announced.
The newly confirmed connections will be from Doha to: Canberra (the airline’s fifth destination in Australia), Dublin in Ireland, Las Vegas (its 11th destination in the US), Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Santiago in Chile, Medan’s Kualanamu International Airport (the airline’s third city link in Indonesia), and Tabuk and Yanbu, the 9th and 10th destinations to which Qatar Airways will operate in Saudi Arabia.
These eight cities join the list of seven new links that had previously been confirmed as will be added to the network in 2017: Auckland in New Zealand will be inaugurated on 5 February (and will represent the world’s longest commercial flight), Sarajevo in Bosnia, Skopje in Macedonia, Libreville in Gabon, Nice in France, Chiang Mai (the airline’s fourth destination in Thailand), and Douala in Cameroon.
Qatar Airways Group’s chief executive Akbar Al Baker observed: “Qatar Airways offers the world the best network (and) we operate the world’s youngest fleet, averaging just five years old. At Qatar Airways, we are going places.”
Qatar Airways has already inaugurated 12 new destinations so far in 2016, with two more cities set to join the network this month (December).
Already added to the network this year have been Atlanta, Boston and Los Angeles in the US, Birmingham in the UK, Helsinki in Finland, Pisa (Qatar Airway’s fourth Italian destination), Yerevan in Armenia, Marrakech (the airline’s second destination in Morocco), Ras Al Khaimah in the UAE, Windhoek in Namibia, and Sydney and Adelaide in Australia.
Qatar Airways will inaugurate a new service to Krabi, its third destination in Thailand, on 6 December and will relaunch flights to the Seychelles on 12 December.
Growth in its dedicated freighter network has also been seen this year. For example, in October it increased the frequency of its Doha-Budapest Airbus 330-200F link from twice to three times a week.
Qatar Airways currently serves more than 150 passenger destinations around the world. Qatar Airways Cargo, the world’s third-largest cargo carrier, serves more than 50 dedicated freighter destinations worldwide via its Doha hub as well as flies freight to those 150 passenger network destinations globally on 191 aircraft.
The Qatar Airways Cargo fleet currently comprises eight A330Fs, 11 Boeing 777 freighters and two B747 freighters.